Developing a second farm in Bali, Indonesia, seemed like a foolproof way to expand the business for Margaret River water lily growers Martin Staines and Kathy Cameron.

With rich volcanic soils, abundant water and a tropical climate, the delicate flowers thrived and the couple was hopeful of providing a year-round supply to a business that is only seasonal in Western Australia.

But after two years they had to walk away from their investment.

"They produced enormous flowers and large quantities of flowers but we found the shelf life, the vase life of the flowers just wasn't suited to sell to a high-value market," Mr Staines said.

"The flowers were spent after two or three days whereas our flowers here (at Margaret River), even in the middle of summer, have a five-to-seven-day vase life."

Ms Cameron said the high cost of air freight made it unviable to export flowers that would only open for a couple of days.

"We had markets in America really, really keen to buy whatever we could grow but they were growing in the tropics and unfortunately, as we discovered at the end of the whole process of setting up the farm and setting up the markets, they didn't have the vase life required for the trade," she said.

The Bali experiment was unfortunate but they were philosophical. It was just another step in a 13-year learning experience that began with a plan to grow water lilies for the cut flower trade.

Mr Staines and Ms Cameron had been looking for a meaningful way to make a living off their 22-hectare property, but they didn't want to grow wine grapes like most of their neighbours. Mr Staines decided to combine an interest in aquaculture with his background as an agricultural scientist, to produce tropical water lilies.

"There's been a lot of trial and error," Mr Staines said.

"You can find information in gardening books about how to grow a water lily plant in your garden pond but to actually grow commercial quantities of water lily flowers, there's very little documented material."

The Dutch-born scientist's experience as a former dairy research leader at WA's Department of Agriculture, was invaluable.

"I think I would have really struggled much more. I'm not sure we would have pulled it off actually," he said.

"Because I've worked in plant nutrition and animal nutrition before, although water lilies are very different to pasture for example, there are still a lot of common elements — water, soil and plants coming together."

Growing their markets was just as tough as growing the flowers according to the duo, and one of the challenges was a reluctance by Australians to embrace a culture of celebrating flowers.

"People tend to think of a bunch of flowers for a particular day — Valentine's day or a birthday or, dare I say it, an apology — but it's not part of the daily or weekly grocery shop to have a beautiful bunch of flowers," Ms Cameron said.

"We would love to change that and have the joy that flowers have in your own home as part of the Australian culture."

Mr Staines took redundancy from his job at the Department of Agriculture and Ms Cameron sold a busy child care centre two years ago. Despite the loss incurred on their Bali investment, the business is supporting them.

They now sell about 75,000 flowers a year mostly into the Sydney and Melbourne markets as well as for export, depending on the exchange rate.

"To actually get consistent quality for the trade florist market, it's very fussy, you want to have consistency in colour, in form, in vase life, there's a lot of different angles to it which we find interesting but it is challenging," Mr Staines said.

"Just like any farming the weather can throw you off, there's all sorts of variabilities, it's not for the faint hearted but we love it."